


Never the Same Again

by anxiousgoat



Series: And Afterwards, They Talked [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Everyone Needs A Hug, Family Feels, Gen, Healing, Sibling friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:34:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23990134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anxiousgoat/pseuds/anxiousgoat
Summary: George and Percy mend some fences and everybody cries.
Relationships: George Weasley & Percy Weasley
Series: And Afterwards, They Talked [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1729894
Comments: 5
Kudos: 53





	Never the Same Again

Percy stops outside the front door. Chickens are scratching about nearby and he wonders whether they’re the same ones that were here last time he visited the Burrow, on that horrible day with Rufus Scrimgeour. The memory of it makes his stomach tighten. He clenches his fists. He’s just here for Sunday lunch. Nothing special, nothing scary.

He looks towards the closed front door, which needs a new coat of paint. It has for years.

He doesn’t move.

This is ridiculous, he tells himself. Sunday lunch with the family, that’s all. They _invited_ him. They want him. And he wants them too, he really does, even if it seemed as though he didn’t for a while. But how can things ever go back to the way they were? Too much has happened for that, surely. 

The door opens and George comes out. Instantly, Fred’s laughing face flashes into Percy’s mind. He takes a step back and the smile fades from George’s face.

“What’s up, Perce?”

He pauses in the doorway for a moment, then, when Percy doesn’t answer, steps through and closes the door, with its peeling green paint, behind him. In fact, he walks right up to Percy and stands in front of him, hands in pockets, frowning.

“Percy? Are you all right?”

And Percy realises, with an odd shock, that he means it. George, who lost his twin brother a mere three weeks ago, is concerned for Percy’s wellbeing. Percy swallows and counts, for some reason, the seconds of silence. There are forty-seven before George turns and walks towards the bench under the hedge.

“Come on,” he calls, so Percy follows. The bench is grubby with old leaves and dirt. Percy takes out his wand and cleans his half before sitting down. Then his face gets hot and his hands clammy and he glances at George, waiting for the mocking comment.,

It doesn’t come, though. Instead, George is smiling a small smile. Does he look – fond? Percy blinks at him, then looks away.

“You thought I was going to laugh at you, didn’t you?” says George.

“No!” says Percy, quickly.

“Yeah, you did.”

Percy risks another quick glance at him, but George is looking out across the garden towards the orchard. His smile has gone but he doesn’t seem angry.

“Well,” he admits, daringly. “Maybe.”

George nods. Then he turns abruptly and looks at Percy.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Percy stares at his mouth as it shapes the words and has no reply. No reply at all. He doesn’t even understand what George means. 

“Ah, come on, Perce,” says George, thumping his leg with gentle playfulness. “You’ve got to say something, even if it’s just “piss off”.”

Percy doesn’t think he would ever say “piss off” to anyone, but then he’s done a lot in the last few months that he never could have imagined himself doing. He doesn’t have anything else to say, either. At last, he settles on,

“I don’t understand,” which comes out rather croakily.

George turns round on the bench, swings his feet up onto it, and leans against the arm rest. Since he’s keeping his feet to the grubby part of the bench and not touching Percy with them, Percy doesn’t object to this. He still feels nervous and embarrassed under George’s scrutiny, though, and doesn’t look at him, instead staring down at his own hands.

“Percy, I’m serious. I’m sorry. Fred –” his voice wavers, but he carries on. He must really want to say this. “Fred was too. He – he’d want me to say this. We were gits to you, both of us, all our lives, really. And we’re sorry.”

How, wonders Percy, in a sort of lightheaded daze, is he supposed to reply to statements that he is so utterly unprepared to hear?

“No you weren’t,” he says faintly. George sighs.

“What did we do when you got made a Prefect? We made fun of you and nicked your badge. When you learned to Apparate we laughed at you. We sent you dragon dung, for God’s sake!”

“You were only teasing,” says Percy. He’s still in the daze. He hated those things the twins did. They made his stomach twist and his hands sweat, but he never said, because the twins were only teasing and he was overreacting. He’s always known that, though he’s also never known how not to mind.

“Yeah,” says George. Percy gives him a sidelong glance, wondering whether this is some huge joke. But George is still looking serious, even a bit grim, and that hardly ever happens. Well, not before Fred – no, he must mean it. “Yeah, we were teasing you, and we didn’t realise how much it upset you, and we were little fucking arseholes, Perce.”

Percy has sometimes thought this himself, especially after he stormed out, away from the family, into the arms of the corrupt Ministry of Magic. He’d lie, unsleeping, going over the times Fred and George just wouldn’t _stop_. But he’d thought he was wrong. Now George is admitting it, confessing it, apologising for it, and this might be the strangest conversation he’s ever had.

“I don’t understand.” The words come out of his mouth unbidden. It isn’t even that he doesn’t understand, he just never imagined that either of the twins would ever – 

“What don’t you understand?”

Percy glares at him.

“Why you’re saying this! You never used to care – no, I don’t mean that. I mean, you never used to – notice? I don’t know. I – I thought it must be my fault.” Tears prickle in Percy’s eyes and he looks down again quickly.

“It was never your fault,” says George. “Mum used to tell us we weren’t giving you a chance, but we never got it. We never listened. As to why I’m saying it – well, it’s like Fred said. Um. You weren’t there. It was just as we were all going out to fight, after you got to Hogwarts. He grabbed my arm and held me back for a second and said, “We were shits, weren’t we?”, and I said “Yeah.” And then we went. But he was right.”

Percy frowns.

“How do you know what he was even talking about?”

“I knew,” George says simply. “We always knew. But there wasn’t time to talk more, and then – and then – he –”

Out of the corner of his eye, Percy sees George swipe at his eyes with his sleeve.

“I’ve been thinking about it since, every now and again. Remembering. And he was right. I thought I should tell you. And say sorry, and that I’m not going to do it any more, and if I do, you tell me, right?”

There’s a strange bubble inside Percy’s mind, and he thinks it might be happiness. He should have known the twins would grow up one day. He should have trusted them. He should have known that they loved him, no matter what. He should have – but he must explain.

“But I betrayed you,” he says. “I betrayed the whole family. The whole – everybody. I was so stupid. I didn’t understand. I thought I was doing the right thing but I wasn’t. I wasn’t, and I was wrong, and it took me so long to realise, and when I did see it it was too late and I couldn’t get out. I was so pig-headed and up my own arse. I was – it’s my fault he’s dead, George. I’m sorry.”

Oh, God. He hadn’t meant to say most of that, it just came rushing out. The lightheaded feeling is back and it’s tinged with dread. It takes him a few seconds to hear what George is saying in reply.

“…goddamned idiot, Percy!”

“What?”

George reaches forward, over his own knees, and grabs Percy by the arm, pulling at it until Percy looks at him.

“Percy. It. Wasn’t. Your. Fault.”

Percy shakes his head.

“I distracted him,” he mumbles. “He –”

“Shut up.”

Percy’s so startled that he does. He stares at George’s hands, now clenched so hard on his knees that the knuckles are white, and suddenly he’s afraid. He doesn’t know how to help people who are upset. The fact that he himself feels that there is an enormous dark hole somewhere inside him where Fred used to be doesn’t make it any easier for him to comfort someone else who is mourning the same loss.

“Shut up,” says George again, hoarsely. Percy closes his mouth and listens to him. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t my fault, even. Do you think I haven’t thought about it… over and over? All the time? But someone blew a hole in the wall, Perce. They weren’t even aiming for us. Didn’t know we were there. We couldn’t have changed anything.”

Percy has never had any particular fondness for touching other people, but now he places his hand on one of George’s and squeezes. As though he’s been waiting for such a gesture, George grabs the hand in both of his, holding it there on his knees. Percy counts again: it’s two minutes and seventeen seconds before George speaks.

“You know what, Perce?” he says, with the wobbliest, blurriest grin Percy has ever seen on his face. “He died happy.”

“What?”

“Yeah.” George’s fingers tighten around his. “Fighting You-Know-Who. Being brilliant. Laughing. He was laughing, you know. You made him laugh.”

Yes. Percy had made him laugh, and Percy had somehow forgotten that the hole had been blown in the wall from the outside, that whether they were on their guard or not it would have happened just the same, because they never could have seen it coming. He had imagined, at three o’clock in the morning after three o’clock in the morning, not making that joke, not making Fred laugh, not seeing him die with the laugh still lighting his face.

Suddenly he feels lighter. It wasn’t his fault. Fred is dead, and perhaps that terrible hole where Fred was will always exist inside him – but Percy didn’t kill him. He squeezes George’s hands back.

“Thanks,” he says, rather hoarse himself. “Look, George, I know we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, but if there’s anything I – if you need any –”

But quite suddenly, George’s hands are wrenched from his, George is swinging his legs off the bench, curling himself over, as though he’s in desperate pain, and there’s a dreadful sound coming from him. A second after that, Percy is shifting right over to George’s side of the bench, where the grime and dirt still lie, lifting George and holding him against him, wrapping his arms around him, rubbing his back and murmuring wordless comfort into his ears.

George does not resist. In fact, Percy’s hug seems to make him cry harder, which makes Percy wonder if embracing him was a bad idea, except that when he leans back a little, George follows, resting his cheek on Percy’s shoulder, sobbing into his neck quite openly. So Percy holds him tightly, and rocks him a little, because he’s always found that soothing himself, and mumbles “I know,” every now and again.

He has no idea how long they stay like that. Minutes. Ten. Fifteen. More. Eventually, George pulls back and starts to scrub at his face with his sleeves again. Percy hastily takes out his wand and conjures a large handkerchief. When he pushes it into his brother’s hands, George starts to laugh in a hiccuppy sort of way. He takes the handkerchief and mops his eyes, wipes his face, then blows his nose vigorously several times.

“Sorry about that,” he says, but Percy shakes his head.

“No. No. You don’t have to – he was your twin, George. I can’t imagine –”

“Yeah. Thanks, Perce. I think I needed that.”

They sit in silence for four minutes and thirty-eight seconds, and then, without either of them speaking, they stand up together, and Percy brushes the leaf mould and dirt off George, and George vanishes the sodden handkerchief, and they walk together into the house for Sunday lunch.


End file.
